


falling

by silentsonata



Series: nice but inaccurate oneshots [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Good Omens Angst, M/M, Mostly Fluff, Wordplay, falling, good omens fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 21:16:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20121802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentsonata/pseuds/silentsonata
Summary: In which Crowley learns that falling doesn't always have to hurt.





	falling

Crowley had only ever really fallen three times in his life.

Of course, he likes to think that he didn’t so much _fall_ the first time as saunter vaguely downwards (throwing open the gates of Hell as he donned killer shades), but everyone else calls it that. And, as so many falls are, his was unintentional. _But really,_ Crowley had thought, _how Great can any plan be if She can’t even answer every question about it?_

Crowley doesn’t remember much of the fall itself. One moment it was clouds and choirs and sunshine, and the next he was slipping through them like a snake out of its skin, the air attacking his face. He was helpless as he fell in those few moments, a fledgling bird thrown out from its nest, and as the ground he approached opened a great ravine to swallow him, he opened his mouth and laughed at it. But his raw face and the unfamiliar sense of loneliness, for him at least, had been a spike of feeling in the growing numbness that had enveloped him in heaven.

Crowley had licked his lips as he revelled in the pain. He wasn’t bored anymore.

He didn’t stay downstairs for long, for better or for worse, because he was sent, soon enough, back upstairs to Eden to give both the demons and the angels a break. But Crowley was sssmart, sssuave, and ssstrategic, and as soon as he arrived, he slipped into the shadows, transformed into a snake, and began to slither about, looking for trouble. Later, as he drank alone in the middle of the night when alcohol was his only friend, he would come to regret his choice of animal, questioning why he once named himself Crawly when, well, snakes didn’t even crawl. But that is a story for another time, and Crowley soon decided to have a little fun.

Of course, him being Crowley, nothing little was ever really… _little_. His serpentine eyes narrowed into slits as he fixed his gaze on the shiniest apple he’d ever seen from a tree with the greatest charisma he’d ever felt from any sort of flora. Crowley slithered up the tree and onto the second-lowest branch of the tree, wondering what he could possibly do with it. But evidently the crystal-clear vision and depth perception of a snake wasn’t enough to keep him from dropping from the branch with a thud.

Hopefully She wasn’t watching. (And so, it was Crowley, not Newton’s apple, that invented gravity, kids. Next time you trip over, blame him.)

The second time he _fell_, it was in a fire that was singeing his hair, its brethren by colour. There was the smell of burning paper, the burning dream of his best friend, destroying the last traces of the angel he cared for so much, and by Satan, it _hurt_. Papercuts had been made on the inside of his heart, and it felt as if his blood had turned to lemon juice. He convinced himself that it was just the smoke that was making his eyes sting, just the natural response of any eye to this situation, but for the first time in millennia, Crowley was struggling to convince himself, falling deeper into desperation.

He had screamed for Aziraphale as he stumbled in, all drunken footsteps with an all-too-sober mind, and he now screamed again. Again. This fire felt hotter and angrier than all the hellfire he’d walked through in hell, and for the first time, Crowley realised that fire only ever took; it was selfish, it was greedy, but it was scared that it would disappear. And, in the quite literal heat of the moment, he decided that he had been the fire to Aziraphale’s water; water gave life, water sustained life, water enveloped, water was a basic need.

And what had he been? He had been selfish, he had never told him that he loved him, and he had been so greedy for his love that he’d never really stopped to properly love him back. Crowley didn’t fear losing anything anymore, because the one thing that he thought he had, the one thing that was keeping him together, was gone. This time, he didn’t enjoy the pain. How could he, when he’d lost Aziraphale? He lashed out, like any fire does when it looks for something for which he could go on. Crowley raged.

No longer could anything douse his anger. No longer could his fire sustain itself without eating into him, and that’s exactly what it did. The internal inferno is always hungry, and its favourite food is self-hate. No longer would anything quench his thirst, and, by Satan, Crowley was parched.

He felt numb again, like he hadn’t since the first fall, when the firefighters’ jet of water sent him flying as he tried to stand up. He collided against the floor with a dull thud, and he howled. Perhaps with cynical laughter. Perhaps with pain.

Crowley had always expected his third fall to hurt. It didn’t. It was fairy-floss and pancakes on Sunday morning. It was going out for crepes on Sunday and receiving a vanilla cone with a flake on top and entering a warm room on a chilly day. As if he hadn’t loved Aziraphale from the moment he had heard the words “I gave it away”, on the third time, Crowley really fell for him.

Perhaps it was the white piano. Perhaps it was the Ritz. Perhaps it was how they had saved the world together and because near-death experiences make people closer (he had gone rather native, after all). Maybe he did believe in being influenced by magic now – not the sort that Aziraphale played at – but the sort that was ineffable, the sort that borders on sorcery but is too kind and pure to darken beyond a pearly white. The sort of magic that was the angel he loved. Crowley wasn’t too sure if it was him going soft or if he was just utterly head over heels, or a mixture of both (most likely).

But when he said “to the world”, Crowley realised that he was just toasting to Aziraphale.

**Author's Note:**

> falling in love must be nice
> 
> [Find me on Tumblr!](https://silent--sonata.tumblr.com/)   
[Chat to me on Discord!](https://discord.gg/pTcajxx)   



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